The History of British Cartoons and Caricature Transcript
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The History of British Cartoons and Caricature Transcript Date: Monday, 4 October 2010 - 12:00AM Location: Museum of London Gresham Lecture, 4 October 2010 The History of British Cartoons and Caricature Lord Baker of Dorking First, I should congratulate you on coming today, in spite of the tube strike. It is a wonderful example of British grit and determination, and congratulations in beating Mr Bob Crow! Of course, the alternative that you did have available to you was to stay at home and watch the Conservative Party Conference on television. I think, on the whole, you have chosen wisely! Caricature is not an English word. The first time it was used in England was in 1748. It comes from the Italian “caricatura” and there is also a French verb, “carcare”. Those verbs mean to load, to burden, and to exaggerate. There were a few drawings made at the end of the 17th Century in Italy of grotesque figures, exaggerated caricatures, but it did not develop as an art form there at all. There is virtually nothing in 18th Century Italian art that could be described as caricature. It sort of fizzled out. Nor did it get established in France. Indeed, the Kings of France were quite clear that they did not like to be caricatured. One engraver, who depicted Louis XIV, the Sun King, in a disparaging way, was torn apart by four horses. That is a practice, which on the whole, discourages the dedication to a profession. Caricature started in Britain in the 1720s. Graphic satire is the only art form our country has created. You will be thinking, all through my lecture, of another art form which you think we have created. We have done very well at various art forms. I will perhaps ask a few people at the end whether they can think of another art form that we have created. Graphic satire was really created by William Hogarth, who was an artist, who, like all artists, had to earn money to pay the rent and the baker’s bill and the butcher’s bill, and so he decided to start doing social satire. The first image I have is Gin Lane. 18th Century British political and social history was dominated by two things: drinking and gambling, rather like today. The gin shops of London had this saying “drunk for a penny, dead-drunk for tuppence, clean straw for nothing”, and here is Gin Lane. Here is the skeleton on the bottom right and the woman has lost her child altogether. Some people are pawning their goods while another man is being carried home, dead-drunk, in a wheelbarrow. Somebody is being put in a coffin. This is set in Bloomsbury just outside the British Museum. The church is still there - Bloomsbury Church. Hogarth specialised in depicting the frailty of humankind – Lechery, Drunkenness, Adultery, Marriage-a-la-mode, The Rake’s Progress and The Harlot’s Progress. They were sets of six or eight engravings and they were not bought by the merchant classes and the aristocrats to put in frames and hang up on their walls. They were bought to be put in drawers and be taken out on cold winter evenings, when they had some friends round for dinner and the candles alight. They would be taken out and they would start chatting over them, as people do with videos today. That was the art form. Very quickly, political caricature also developed. The first and most important political caricature is of Sir Robert Walpole who was the first Prime Minister, one of the greatest Prime Ministers and who was in office for 20 years. The caricature is called Idol Worship or the Path to Preferment, and it shows that, to be successful in the early 18th Century, people had to kiss Walpole’s bottom. His government was known as the Robinocracy: government by Robin, for Robin and through Robin. He exerted massive power through patronage and jobs, and ran the country successfully for 20 years. Everybody knew that the image was of Walpole so Hogarth did not need to show his face for him to be identified. Walpole did not like it. He did not bring in censorship of cartoons, although he did censor plays in the 1740s, because it is very difficult to censor a caricature. The lack of censorship is one of the reasons why caricature developed in Britain. Walpole used to send a few people out to arrest the print sellers, and hold them overnight or something but they were let off the next day. He tried to be a little threatening but this ploy never really worked. This period developed into the golden age of caricature which was from 1760 to 1830, and the great figure was Gillray. Possibly the most famous Gillray shows William Pitt the Younger, dividing up the world with Napoleon. At this time, Pitt was considered to be a hero, although he is depicted with the spottled nose. Gillray cartoons Pitt as totally dead-drunk as Prime Minister. However, he galvanised Europe to fight against Napoleon. This was a similar situation to 1940. Britain was the one country standing against the tyrant. This was a very vivid and a very famous cartoon called the Plum-Pudding in Danger. However, there is a slight ambivalence, which is a common theme in some cartoons. Gillray is praising Britain for fighting France, because there were big countries in Europe in that period – Russian, Austria and Prussia had huge armies, which Pitt paid to fight for him. He put together the alliances, but for a time, Britain stood alone. However, while it is flattering to Pitt, at the same time Gillray is suggesting that the plum-pudding is in danger with two people carving up the world. This is an image that has been used endlessly. Jim Callaghan and Tony Benn were shown to be carving up the Labour Party; Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher carving up the Conservative Party; and Blair and Brown carving up the Labour Party. This has been an image that has been continued right through, because the good images last. Rowlinson is a famous name and he specialised very much in social satires. One particular caricature shows the Prince Regent in blue, leading a carriage. He did a few similar cartoons as watercolours but towards the end of his life, he took up political caricature because he needed the money. Rowlinson had a weakness for gambling and also drink, so he had actually to do a lot of political caricaturing. George Cruickshank started as a political caricaturist and a social caricaturist in the 1820s. The important thing to appreciate is that this represented the end of separate prints. Previously, cartoons were engravings on copper. The artist would take a copperplate, cover it with wax, and then take a steel bureau, which was like a knife, and cut, through the wax, the design onto the plate. Sometimes, they would draw a preliminary drawing in pencil or charcoal, but not always, because this was a business that had to work overnight. The artists worked at night to do their plate, and it might take between five and eight hours. Their fingers would be bleeding at the end of the exercise, almost certainly. Then, when they had finished, they would take the plate downstairs to a print shop, rub off the wax and ink the plate, because the incisions were through the wax of course. They ran off about 100 copies – never more than 200. Then the artist would, with watercolour, colour the first one. That is what Cruickshank would have done to this one. Following this, a room full of young boys and young girls would colour the rest, and the print would then be put up in the print ship the following morning, priced at sixpence plain, a shilling coloured. The print shops were in St James, Bond Street, the Strand, and the City. It was a business in which the artist had to produce the cartoon quickly. This is Cruickshank doing a lovely social satire. The two fat people are stuck in the middle; a man’s sword is picking up the lady’s dress; and there is a soldier who has trod on a lady’s dress and it has torn. This is the sort of thing that happens at many cocktail parties today. However, it is a lovely picture and quite famous also. The art form changed in the 1820s because the technology changed. The artist discovered that he could actually engrave on boxwood which is a very hard wood. If he made a block of wood and cut it against the grain, he could draw onto it with a sharp knife. Now, the advantage of that was that he could put that alongside print and make a little magazine. This was the beginning of Punch. Some magazines were started in the 1820s and 1830s. Punch started in 1841 and became the cartoonists’ magazine. It was only possible because all the pictures in Punch were wood engravings, on boxwood. John Leech became a famous caricaturist for Punch, and his cartoon ‘Substance and Shadow’ created the word “cartoon”. Cartoons, of course, go back to Raphael. In the V&A today, there are Raphael’s cartoons and the exhibitions of the tapestries that have come from the Sistine Chapel. Cartoon was also used in the 1841/42 period for when the House of Commons was being redesigned. There was a competition, and all the designs which were put in were called cartoons. Cartoon Number One, Substance and Shadow, is a social comment.